


London Nights

by Mamogirl



Category: Backstreet Boys
Genre: Angst, Brian's voice angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Getting Back Together, Hurt/Comfort, London, M/M, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 20:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20070244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamogirl/pseuds/Mamogirl
Summary: A Helping hand to make it rightI'm holding you through the night.It should have been a trip made to reconnect and record the new album.It turned out to be a chance to mend old scars, heal new and the blossom of something new.





	London Nights

First Chapter

The first night in London didn’t go as Nick expected it to be.

And neither did the second night. Or the third. Until the seventh night, Nick had been quite sure that his plans were just about to go down the drain, forgotten and useless just like he was feeling. Perhaps he should have thought over it a little bit more instead than jumping into things irrationally. Perhaps he shouldn’t have waited that long, his mind going over and over about what was going on instead than taking the courage and act.

But Nick hadn’t taken in consideration one variability.

Brian.

People always thought that Brian was predictable, the one that they would always be sure about and never left wondering about his next moves. Oh, they were so wrong! Brian was unpredictable, although he was always so subtle and so silent that Nick had always found about whatever plan had been on the elder’s mind only when he couldn’t put a stop on it.

Like the first night in London.

That trip had been his idea. Reconnecting. Knowing each other once again because they had been living as a foursome and now they were five again, complete and whole as they should have always been. But that hadn’t been the only reason behind that plan.

Oh no.

The real reason, the main motive had the features and the mystery of Brian, and that secret he had been carried around and pretended that it didn’t exist. They had to watch him falling over and over, his voice breaking during notes that he had always been able to sing as if he was merely breathing; they had to hear the “_I’m okay, don’t worry”_ lie being served so many times that, after awhile, it just fell flat and meant nothing.

Nick hated that shit.

Nick hated the fact that their friendship was still so strained that he couldn’t even reach out, push Brian against a wall so he couldn’t escape or hide anymore and press for the truth. Nick hated that Brian didn’t even trust him anymore not to lie, not to look into his eyes and blatantly acted if it was just a simple and annoying cold affecting his voice.

That was when that idea started to form itself inside his brain. Brian needed an intervention, Brian needed to know that he couldn’t keep pull that shit as if no one cared or worried. They were a group. They were a family, first and foremost. They, Brian and Nick, had been best friend and something, deeper and almost unknown, was still lingering through the waves, desperately trying to keep its head above the water and just wait for the quietness.

The first night in London, so, Nick was ready to play his part.

They stayed in, everyone tired from the long flight and talked about everything but the reason why they were there: supposedly for their new album, supposedly for the documentary but, in reality, to break the appearance and bring out the truth. They ordered fish and chips, of course they did since they were in London and it was a tradition born decades and decades before. They sat down in the kitchen and just talked, reminiscing the past and jokes that still existed in the memory and no one would allow or let everyone forget; they talked about what was going through their life, all those details that sometimes they didn’t bring up because work was their first priority.

Everyone talked but Brian.

That first night Nick observed Brian all through dinner and he didn’t care if he wasn’t subtle or obvious. He wanted to be, as if it was a statement of what was going to happen, or a declaration that Brian hadn’t been that good at hiding and make himself as much invisible as possible. He talked, of course, because it was something that he couldn’t help but his eyes never left his target: just like a detective, Nick needed proof, clues that it wasn’t something that he had made up in his mind and that the only solution possible was an intervention.

And not just that. But that was the second part of his plan, the only thing he was going to treat and handle very carefully because a lot depended on it: relationships; friendships or what was left after all the previous storms; hearts and souls that had spent and wasted so much time trying to find the perfect match that had always resulted into a false and a lie.

But it was too soon. Not that first night, at least. So, Nick just observed Brian, the way he kept to himself and barely added jokes or corrected when one of them was wrong. And that alone was a little bit worrying because Brian always loved to point out things, as if he was holding a book or an encyclopedia behind his back. Without even been asked to, at some point Brian had stood up and started washing the dishes, his back obscuring the face and Nick couldn’t do nothing more but noticing how far from being relaxed he was: shoulders and muscles tense, straining under that hard control that Brian was holding for whatever reason; yet, his hands were visible shaking while rinsing the dishes.

Nick should have known that something was about to happen.

Nick should have known that his intervention should have started way sooner, and that he shouldn’t have waited until that night.

Nick should have known that Brian was going to pull out something totally unpredictable.

Yet, he had never thought it could be that devastating.

Brian talked. Brian explained as best he could his condition, how doctors and therapists were so optimistic that he could heal and how that wasn’t going to ruin or affect his work. Brian answered the question of Aj, Kevin and Howie, not even wincing when accusation started to fly, and Kevin’s death glare almost burned a hole in the wall. Brian watched Nick during that confrontation, daring him to say something, provoking him to react as he was used to, with screams and yelling and whining.

He didn’t.

Nick just opened his computer and started searching for that strange and unknown condition, wanting to know if it was fixable or if it would going to be something that would hang between them, a phantom of how much they had taken Brian for granted.

How much Nick had taken him for granted.

As words flown by his eyes, descriptions and explanations that he could barely understand, Nick couldn’t help but let that ball of guilty grew bigger and bigger until it was the only sensation pulsing inside his stomach. It was a sick feeling, that kind of that keeps going up and down your throat and you don’t know if you’re going to be sick or not.

He failed. That was the truth at the bottom of the line.

Nick had failed because he hadn’t seen this coming. He had promised he would be better, he had promised he would become adult and responsible, taking part of the weight off from Brian’s shoulders because he had been the one steering the wheel while Kevin was gone and madness was still his and Aj’s mistress.

So that first night in London didn’t go as Nick had expected, dreamed and wished. That night, after dinner, after the long and exhausting conversation that followed Brian’s admission, didn’t go as Nick had wanted. That night Nick just came downstairs and walked silently towards Brian’s bedroom. It was the middle of the night and everyone should have been asleep: yet, something could be heard in that stillness and it was a sound that Nick knew too well, having heard it when the two of them had been sharing a room and Brian thought that he was already asleep. 

Muffled sobs. Breath itching.

Nick rested his shoulder on the doorframe, his hand on the door and listened to those silent pleas of help, wondering if he should break whatever wall was between him and Brian and just go to his best friend.

His more than a best friend.

But he didn’t find the courage. He didn’t have the strength. He didn’t know how he was supposed to comfort Brian when he still couldn’t wrap his mind around his confession.

How can you help someone when you don’t know nothing about their problems?

How can you help someone when you don’t have a solution right next to you?

So, Nick stayed there, sitting with his back against the door and his heart breaking with every tear he heard coming from the other side. Nick stayed there all night, protecting and defending that breakdown because he knew how much Brian hated to show his weakness and his pain, and fighting the longing to go inside and wrap his friend into a tight embrace. Nick stayed there and, in that lonely guard, he promised himself that he would do everything to fix whatever was broken inside Brian.

How can you help someone you love when they don’t even know it?

How could Nick help that someone he loved more than everything, if Brian didn’t even know about his feelings?

*************

The first night in London didn’t go as Brian expected it to be. Although, Brian had dreaded that first night in London.

The flight had been long, almost too long. Music hadn’t helped, no other distractions had managed to slip into his mind and take attention away from all those thoughts running like madmen. Like zombies that wanted blood and every small tip of brain they could get their sharp claws on.

He was already tired. Exhausted. How much sleep had he got in those last days? Or in those last months? He couldn’t count them, not hours or minutes; he just felt it inside his bones, they way they had been aching from the moment he would get up in the morning and dragged them from task to task, from meeting to meeting.

From doctor’s visit to visit.

He had been the first to arrive at the house. And that, in a way, had been quite comforting. He needed time to think, he needed time to gather his courage and plan what he was going to say. He couldn’t keep up with the hiding and the lies, not with that new album starting to take shape and a documentary that was supposed to tell their story and truth.

And expose him as the biggest flunk of the world.

He couldn’t run anymore. He couldn’t tell everyone, he couldn’t slip to the whole world the same lie he had been handling around day after day, show after show. It wasn’t just a cold anymore. It wasn’t just an exhaustion coming from too many years of being the sole leader of the group.

It was so much worse. It was so much more scaring.

How was he supposed to deliver that news?

How was he supposed to make them keep seeing him as someone that they could rely on, instead than someone broken that could ruin everything?

The house was still empty as he walked through the rooms, stopping from window to window to watch a sky that it was always the same but, at the same time, changed with colors and shapes. He needed to steady himself, he needed to find a logical explanation about all the reasons why he had kept that secret for so long. He needed to find the strength to look into Nick’s eyes and silently begged him not to hate him more than he already did.

He had failed him.

Again.

He had disappointed him, over and over. The superhero of those younger years when he was worshipped, when he couldn’t make any mistakes in the eyes of a Nick that thought and believed that he had hung the moon and moved the planets to make them meet and fell... Brian banished that last thought out of his mind, as he had done for so many times. He couldn’t fall into that rabbit hole, not when his mind was already shattered all over the place.

That first night in London time seemed to stretch until eternity. Howie arrived second, then Kevin and Aj. Brian smiled at them. Hugged them, lingering a little longer into his cousin’s arms as if he could steal a little bit of strength and confidence. He could it, he knew. He could convince them that it was just such a little misstep, something that he could outdo in a blink.

Maybe, if he was really good, he could even convince himself.

Lastly, Nick arrived. And all Brian’s resolutions came crashing down like a castle made of sand. All of Brian’s strengths came down as fearfully little kittens because, suddenly, he knew that he couldn’t go on with his plan. Because Nick smiled at him as if nothing had never changed, because that light in his eyes told that something was about to be turned around, but he didn’t know, he couldn’t even anticipate what.

That was Nick’s magnetism.

That was Brian loved more about that boy. Well, Nick wasn’t a boy anymore. And that was the bottom line of everything, of him trying to hold on that childish thought of needing to protect someone that never really needed him in the first place. That was the bottom line of how he had stepped in the darkness, hid there until he was sure that he could be fixed and healed before anyone could notice that he was broken.

Before Nick could see his broken scars and shattered voice.

But he had failed, Brian knew it from the moment he felt Nick’s gaze burn into his soul, exposing insecurities and a weakness that only one could ever be able to reach and pull out from his soul. He had failed, proved to be a bad liar as if he felt Nick’s following every move, analyzing every single word he would say. He had failed because Nick had already exposed his mask, challenging him to admit whatever was wrong instead that believing his lies.

Oh, if Brian had failed!

And right at that moment, with dinner already finished and nothing else to do but washing the dishes and hoping to avoid something that he was dreading and fearing, Brian knew that he couldn’t lead the Boys on anymore. Here they were, talking about the new album, setting up dates after dates, and all he could thought was that he could probably made them fall down as shattered pieces of paper.

“Guys… I need to tell you something.” His voice broke in the middle of that one sole sentence, a burning red fire started to rise upon his face in shame and embarrassment of how low he had fallen just within a space of few weeks. Eight eyes focused on him, worry and concern latched in something that Brian knew was going to be hard to get: comprehension; understanding.

Support.

Yet, his pride didn’t diminish. Yet, his pride turned to be the only one weapon he could use in that moment, his sole defense against whatever reaction he was going to get. Yet, his pride made his back stood a little straighter, his head a little higher because he wasn’t going to crumple like that broken voice that he was becoming.

“Is something wrong?”

“Are you getting a divorce?”

“You aren’t going to pull a Kevin and quit too, right?”

“I’m not quitting but… yes, something is wrong.”

Brian could already feel Kevin’s burning stare, the disappointment latched into those eyebrows that even if he was older, and wiser, still managed to make him feel like a little kid.

_“Come on Brian. It’s not like you’re telling them that you have to have another surgery.”_

Things had been different back then. They hadn’t been a group for almost twenty-five years, back then. They hadn’t been each other’s back through thick and thin, through drugs and alcohol and Kevin’s leaving. They were young, back then, and thought that success was the sole most important thing.

Things, now, were totally different.

Or so Brian hoped. And with that hope, clinging to it as if it was the last thing able to hold on to, Brian took a long breath and started to dismantle his own web of lies.

“You’ve probably noticed that I hadn’t been on top of my game lately. At first, I thought it was just a cold that wouldn’t go away. At first, I thought that I was just tired, you know? But we couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop, no matter how much my body was begging me to. And for a long time, I didn’t even want to acknowledge that, maybe, something was really wrong with my voice. – Brian looked down, ashamed and embarrassed about his own being naïve. His tone was full of regrets, the realization that if he had acted before maybe, just a tiny and small maybe, he wouldn’t even had to stand there and let them know about it. – But I’ve never got better. My voice kept breaking and, sometimes, I would feel as if there were invisible hands that were trying to strangle me. Those hands were real. Those hands were, are, the muscles around the vocal cords. Those hands are something called _muscle tension dysphonia._”

Silence fell in the kitchen room as Brian tried to explain as best as he could what that strange and difficult definition meant: he tried to reassure them, tried to tell them how he was so focused on getting back to his standard and keep up with the recording and all the shows that they already had planned. He never faltered. He never bit back to the accusations and the doubts. He had to tone down his own pride, swallow down the belief that he could, somehow, ruin their reputation with that much on stake. He hadn’t been ashamed to look to each one of them and asked for that something that should already been unspoken: support and comprehension, reassurance and so much patience because that wasn’t something that could be fixed with a medication or a surgery.

He had to look straight through his friends, bandmates, family and realize that something had definitely changed in that moment, a sort of “before the revelation” and “after”: Kevin was already imagine all the ways he was going to gain control of the situation, a lump in his throat thinking that he could be blamed because he left all the weight on Brian’s shoulders; Aj had already taken and wore the protective armor, a shield that he had been dying to use since he had always been the one everyone had to take care of because of his own problems and issues; Howie was being the pragmatic one, opened up a laptop and trying to understand more about the issue and learning about how the could cope and work around it.

And then there was Nick. And, for the first time in his life, Brian couldn’t read him.

Nick didn’t speak. Nick didn’t react at all, letting himself being dragged by Howie through website to website. Nick just stood there and watched Brian with a look, an expression, that Brian couldn’t define and scared him to the core. Was he angry? Was he disappointed? Was he relieved that, finally, the old king was about to seat aside, and he was going to take the crown of the leader? Was he thinking about kicking Brian out of the group? So, Brian begged him silently to say something, pleaded him to at least react, whether it was to show compassion or regret.

But it didn’t happen.

Nothing really happened, though Nick kept his stare on Brian’s for the rest of the night.

And something inside Brian ached more than it should had, longed for something that it was just a mere fantasy or a last shred of a forgotten memory. Something inside Brian felt broken, shattered in a piece that he wasn’t really sure it was going to be fixed.

That first night in London didn’t go as Brian expected and dreaded. In a way it went better than he would ever thought and imagined; in a way it went worse because, at the end of the discussion, Brian went straight to his room without knowing where he stood with Nick.

And that was what hurt the most.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you miss me? LOL


End file.
